Picture this: You are running late for an important office meeting and don’t have time to fix breakfast. So, you decide to make a quick stop at your go-to coffee shop. Upon arrival, you find a long queue. Disheartened, you leave for work empty-handed.
Now, imagine the same coffee shop having a mobile app that allows pre-ordering. With just a few taps, busy office workers like yourself could skip the line, grab coffee on the go, and enjoy their caffeine fix without any hassle.
By understanding customer interactions across all touchpoints, you can identify unmet needs and create smooth, convenient experiences. In turn, you’ll boost customer retention and drive revenue growth. In fact, research by McKinsey shows positive customer experiences can boost sales conversion by 10-15%.
Which begs the question, how do you analyze data across hundreds of touchpoints? Customer experience analytics is the answer.
Table of contents:
Customer experience (CX) analytics involves the collection, analysis, and visualization of customer data to understand how users interact with your product or service. This process draws from a variety of data sources such as websites, product experiences, mobile apps, and physical locations.
The goal of customer experience analytics is to identify pain points and spot new opportunities to enhance your customer experience. Data analytics tools can be used to help visualize the overall customer journey.
1. Enhancing personalization
Customers today want to feel a personal connection with the brands they do business with. Recent McKinsey research shows that 71% of customers expect brands to deliver personalized interactions. Even Dr. Katia Walsh, the Chief Global Strategy and AI Officer at Levi Strauss & Co., said in an episode of The Data Chief:
“No two Levi consumers are the same—why should the rewards that we offer in our loyalty program be the same? We use more data than we have ever had in the past and apply machine learning to that data to ensure that we provide exclusive, fully individualized benefits for each of our individual loyalty program members.”
With customer experience analytics, you can also gain a deeper understanding of your target audiences and what works for them. For instance, analyzing KPIs and metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI) can help you identify which marketing channels or strategies drive the most sales. Taking a closer look at customer patterns and behavior can help you refine your marketing efforts to deliver highly targeted and relevant campaigns.
2. Boosting conversion
Whether you are in retail, manufacturing, or tech, the key to turning prospects into loyal brand advocates is active listening and observations.
Using customer experience analytics, you can identify patterns that indicate loyalty or dissatisfaction within the buyer’s journey. Armed with this information, you can actively build processes to replicate success or take actions to course correct. Perhaps you discover opportunities to improve customer service, upgrade product features, create a smoother onboarding, or offer loyalty programs and discounts.
For example, with ThoughtSpot’s AI-Powered Analytics, Northmill was able to analyze its user data and find out where people usually stop during the sign-up process. By utilizing this information, the bank was able to make changes to its onboarding process, boosting its conversion rate by a whopping 30%.
“It is all about being as relevant and personal as possible so users’ personal finance can benefit from the insights. It can be getting a notification of a discount deal at your favorite cafe or a tailored offer to lower the cost of your insurance.”
3. Increasing revenue
Customer experience analytics provides actionable insights into customer journeys—from the initial consideration stage and onboarding to product adoption and overall satisfaction. Understanding this funnel can help you identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, reduce churn, and even increase customer lifetime value.
For example, Canadian Tire leveraged ThoughtSpot at the beginning of the pandemic to identify cross and upsell opportunities in its pet department. By identifying relevant customer behavior patterns, the company increased its sales by 20%—despite 40% of its brick-and-mortar stores temporarily closing.
Customer experience key performance indicators (KPIs) empower managers and stakeholders to monitor the performance of CX goals, identify customer trends, validate whether improvements have taken place, and communicate valuable insights. However, this can only happen with the right set of KPIs. To eliminate guesswork from the equation and help you make data-driven decisions, here are the top 10 CX KPIs you need to know:
Net promoter score (NPS): Measures the likelihood of customers recommending your products or services to others
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): Tracks customer satisfaction with your product or service based on a survey or feedback mechanism
Retention rate: Represents the percentage of customers who will continue to use your product or service over a specific period
Stage conversions: Reflects the effectiveness of the sales or marketing funnel in moving prospects through various stages toward conversion or sale
Customer effort score (CES): Evaluates the ease with which customers are able to accomplish a specific task or resolve an issue
Reach: Total number of unique individuals exposed to your marketing campaign or message
Lead-to-Customer conversion rate: Total percentage of leads that ultimately convert into paying customers
Churn Rate: Total percentage of users who have not used your product over a specific period or have chosen to cancel their subscription
Customer ratings: Indicates the overall number of positive and negative reviews and ratings customers leave on review platforms or social media
Session Length: Measures the average duration of user sessions within the product
A strong customer experience analytics program relies on a strategic process and the right tools for analysis. Here are the three tried-and-tested techniques that will help you boost the ROI of your analytics initiatives.
Step 1: Capture both structured and unstructured customer data
When collecting customer data for analysis, most companies consider direct customer surveys and metrics like CSAT or NPS. However, this data is just one-dimensional.
To truly understand the complete customer journey, you must capture in-depth data. This may also include unstructured data like social media mentions, customer support interactions, and email communications. By combining data repositories, you can gain a wealth of information about customer sentiment.
💡Pro tip: The better your communication with your data team, the better the insights. Find tips for deeper collaboration in our ‘Context is Gold’ whitepaper.
Step 2: Use a self-service analytics tool
Once you’ve built a solid foundation for analytics, it is time to choose the right self-service analytics tool. This is important because it puts the power of customer experience analytics in the hands of frontline decision-makers who engage with your customers day in and day out. Ensure your data analytics software has an intuitive interface, a pre-built library of interactive data visualizations, and robust security controls.
For instance, ThoughtSpot’s intuitive, search-based interface allows any user to ask questions in natural language and gain instant insights. With just a few clicks, you can easily integrate ThoughtSpot with multiple cloud databases and generate real-time, interactive Liveboards. This allows business users to confidently assess what’s happening in your business and make data-driven decisions.
Step 3: Continuously monitor and iterate
Customer behaviors and market trends are always evolving. That’s why you must stay on top of your KPIs and metrics. With an intuitive tool like ThoughtSpot, you can set automated alerts on essential KPIs. This allows you to regularly review and analyze data to identify emerging trends, changing customer preferences, and up-and-coming opportunities.
Although many organizations prioritize the customer experience (CX), few are able to capitalize on their CX data and turn it into a competitive advantage.
With ThoughtSpot, you bring together all your customer, marketing, and sales data into a source of truth and uncover granular insights with interactive dashboards and limitless drill-downs. Whether you want to reduce customer churn or analyze your campaign performance, our AI-powered capabilities will help you unlock new levels of innovation, efficiency, and competitiveness in the dynamic global marketplace.
Request a ThoughtSpot demo to take your CX game to the next level.
